Emmeline Pankhurst led the British suffragette movement (Image: Daily Record)

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IT was International Women’s Day at the weekend. A day to celebrate all the amazing achievements of women throughout our history.

We’ve come a long way since Emmeline Pankhurst led the British suffragette movement in fighting for the right for the female vote.

But there is still a long way to go.

The majority of the world’s 1.3 billion poor are female. On average, women receive between 30 and 40 per cent less pay than men earn for the same work.

And many countries are still in the dark ages when it comes to their attitudes to the fairer sex.

The Labour MP Maria Fyfe was on Scotland Tonight last week, talking to me about her time at Westminster.

In 1987, she was the only female Scottish Labour MP walking those corridors of power.

She was very much a woman in a man’s world.

Unconcerned, though, she just got on with doing her job, at the same time fighting for more females in politics.

Decades on, though, we are still some way off equal representation. The numbers themselves tell the true story.

Of the 650 MPs in the House of Commons, 147 are women. And in the last Scottish election only 45 women took seats at Holyrood.

No matter what we do to fight the cause, there always seem to be this lingering notion among some Neanderthals that we’re somehow inferior.

Look at the letter left on the seat of a female pilot by a male passenger in America, which has since gone viral on the internet.

“The cockpit of an airline is no place for women,” the scrawled note read.

“A woman being a mother is the most honour. Sorry not PC.

“PS I wish WestJet could tell me a fair lady is at the helm, so I can book another flight!”

It would be funny if it wasn’t so very sad that some people still think like that.

But it’s not just blokes who undermine the battle against inequality. Women can be just as damaging.

I recently read a column by a female journalist in which she explained that she had told her daughter that the best thing she could do with her life was to marry a rich man so she would never need to work.

The child concerned has been sent to a top private school. Not to give her the kind of education that would see her soaring up her chosen career ladder, but so that she can meet the “right kind of boys”.

How utterly depressing.

I wonder what Malala Yousafzai would make of that.

She’s the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen for daring to speak up for the right of girls to be educated.

She doesn’t dream of finding a good husband, but of being Prime Minister in her homeland.